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The Kingdom of Kroraina
Krorän or Kroraina (Chinese: 樓蘭) - now known as Loulan - was an ancient kingdom between 176 BC and 630 AD, based around the important oasis city of Kroraina, a thriving trading center on the north-eastern edge of the Lop Nur (the name means "the lake converging many water sources" in Mongolian language), along the ancient Silk Road. The term Loulan is the Chinese transcription of the native name Krorän and is used to refer to the city as well as the kingdom. The early settlers in Kroraina were an Indo-European people called the Tocharians who lived in the region as early as 1800 BC. Interestingly, their language sometimes called Tocharian is not as closely related to the neighboring Indo-European languages as it is to western Indo-European languages such as Italic and Celtic. The ancient city of Kroraina had regularly arranged streets, good houses and a flood-prevention dam surrounded by trees. Inside the rooms were different sorts of farm tools and in grain-storing jars were seeds. There were also residential buildings, palaces, temples, workshops, defense walls and towers. Suddenly, this important city disappeared mysteriously from history without a trace and reverted to desert. The Silk Road In 1877, when the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen introduced the term "Great Silk Road" for the trade routes between the Far East and the West that ran through Central Asia, it became clear to the world that beneath the sands of these forgotten regions, ancient cultures could be found. It was a time when archaeologists were making great discoveries: lost cities, countries and empires proving to hold treasures spanning many centuries: silk, silver, gold, wall paintings, sculptures and jewellery, all of high artistic quality and bearing witness to astonishing interactions between cultures and religions. Silk was one of the first trade items and was highly sought after. For some time, it was even an official means of payment on the Silk Road. But many other products traveled this route. Caravans of horses, oxen, donkeys and as many as a thousand camels traversed the region from east to west, from north to south and back again. Besides silk, the products from China in the east included lacquer, ceramics and porcelain. Traders also brought glass, wool and linen (often in the form of tapestries) from the Mediterranean region in the west. Fur came from Siberia in the north, while topaz, emeralds, perfumes, henna and exotic animals were brought from India in the south. Every part of the Silk Road traded also in paper, leather and chemicals such as ammonium chloride, used in polishing metal and treating leather. The origins of the Silk Road are said to lie in the second century BC. Silk must have begun traveling west soon after it was first produced by the Chinese of the Shang dynasty, but in the region that separates China from Europe and Western Asia the obstacles were formidable. To the southwest lay the Himalaya Mountains - highest in the world - and the Tibetan Plateau. The northern steppes were controlled by hostile Mongols and Xiongnu. This geographic and political reality channeled traders from central China along the Gansu (Hexi) corridor to the western extremity of the Great Wall and the oasis of Dunhuang. There, leaving the Chinese cultural sphere, traders began a 17-day trek across the waterless, treacherous Lop desert to the next oasis: Kroraina (Loulan) - the gateway to the Taklamakan, the world’s second-largest desert, one of the most hostile environments on the planet. From Kroraina, the oldest part of the Silk Road continues along the southern edge of the Taklamakan, where archeologists have found several other ghost towns and important sites called Miran, Charkhlik, Cherchen, Endere and Niya buried in the desert sands. The distance from Kroraina to Niya - the westernmost town of the Kroraina Kingdom - is about 370 miles. To the west of Niya was the powerful kingdom of Khotan. As the Taklamakan Desert expanded and water became increasingly scarce, Niya was abandoned in much the same way as Kroraina. The history of Kroraina The first historical mention of Kroraina was in a letter from the Chanyu of the Xiongnu to the Chinese Emperor in 126 BC in which he boasted of conquering the Yuezhi, the Wusun, Loulan (Kroraina) and Hujie, "as well as the twenty-six states nearby". In the same year, the envoy Zhang Qian - sent in 139 BC by the Chinese Emperor Wudi to seek an alliance with the Yuezhi people, who lived north of the Oxus River, in present-day Uzbekistan - returned from his thirteen years long journey. Zhang passed through Kroraina, where he recorded 1.570 households and 14.100 persons, of whom 2.912 were soldiers. The land was sandy and salty and "the people accompany their herds of animals, following the water and grass". After Zhang’s return, there were about 10 missions per year from the Han court to Central Asia and - as traffic on the Silk Road grew - it became imperative for the Chinese to protect the route from the Xiongnu nomads. The Chinese Emperor would also like extending contact with Fergana people, after Zhang told him about "blood-sweating" horses from there. However contacts were made difficult by the Kroraina Kingdom. Kroraina was therefore attacked in 108 BC and its king captured, after which Kroraina agreed to pay a tribute to Han. The Xiongnu people, after had become aware of these events, attacked Kroraina too. The king of Kroraina therefore decided to send one of his sons as a hostage to Xiongnu and another to the Han court. Of course, this behavior upset the Chinese court: the king was taken and interrogated, but he answered that Kroraina is a small state lying between large states. It seems that he succeed to satisfy the Han emperor concerns because he was released. The king of Kroraina died in 92 BC and his countrymen requested the Han court that the king's son be returned. The Han court refused this request, telling that "the Han Emperor had grown too fond of him to let him go". In Kroraina, another king was crowned and again a son was sent as a hostage to the Han court. After the death of this king, the Xiongnu returned the hostage son, named Chang Gui back to Kroraina to rule as king. The Han, becoming aware of this fact, demanded that the new king presented himself to the court. Chang Gui refused, considering the fact that the hostages sent to the Han court had been never released. In 77 BC, at a banquet held in Kroraina to greet the Chinese envoy Fu Jiezi (after other several Han envoys were killed or kidnapped), Chang Gui was stabbed to death by the envoy’s guards and his severed head was hung from the tower of the northern gate. From then on, China asserted greater control over the area. The Chang Gui king's younger brother Wei Tu Qi was crowned king of Kroraina by the Han court and the kingdom was renamed Shanshan. The the capital was moved to an area southwest of Kroraina and stationed a military commander there. In 55 BC, Shanshan became a puppet kingdom of China. While the name of the kingdom was changed to Shanshan by the Chinese, the region continued to be known as Krorän by the locals. The region remained under Chinese control intermittently and when China was weak in the Western Regions, Kroraina was essentially independent. In 25 AD it was recorded that Kroraina was in alliance with the Xiongnu. Around 119 AD, Ban Yong recommended that a Chinese colony of 500 men be established in Kroraina. A later military colony was established here by the Chinese general So Man. It was recorded that in 222 AD, the Shanshan Kingdom sent tribute to China, then later in 283 AD that the son of the king was sent as a hostage to the Chinese court during the reign of Jin Dynasty. Kroraina was also recorded as a dependent kingdom of Shanshan in the 3rd century. It seems that about a thousand of Chinese soldiers were established at Kroraina in 260 AD. The town of Kroraina was abandoned apparently due to lack of water. The last document found in the city has been dated to 330 AD. After the 5th century, the land was frequently invaded by nomads such as Tuyuhuns, the Rourans and the Dingling and the entire area gradually became abandoned. At around 630 (at the beginning of the Tang Dynasty period), the remaining Shanshan people, led by Shan Fu Tuo, migrated in the Northern area. The Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang passed through this region in 644 AD on his return from India to China, visited a town called Nafubo (thought to be Charklik) of the Kroraina Kingdom and he wrote: "A fortress exists, but not a trace of man". Why Kroraina had been abandoned Without doubts, the city of Kroraina had been suddenly abandoned as early as in the 4th century. It has drawn wide interest and debates in what factors caused the Kroraina's abandonment, some of which are listed below: * An war of conquest (unrecorded by history) in which the kingdom fell and inhabitants went in exile * The Tarim River - the city’s main source of water - changed its course * The peripatetic movements of Lop Nur Lake * A certain plague that struck the kingdom * The opening of the northern route of the Silk Road which diverted most of the trade traffic away from the southern route (via Kroraina) The Tarim River gathers its water from the Kunlun Mountains in the south, the Pamirs in the west and the Tian Shan Mountains in the north and flows in an eastward arc along the northern edges of the Taklamakan, toward the salt marshes of Lop Nor. In its lifetime, Kroraina was situated on the north shore of the lake. Then, in the fourth century, the Tarim River changed course and Lop Nor moved south into the desert. According to the Chinese historian Li Jiangfeng, the final demise of Kroraina was not caused by a sudden change in the course of the Tarim River, but by gradually diminishing water in the rivers that fed the Lake Lop Nor. From Chinese historical sources, we can see how the Kroraina people’s rations of black millet were gradually cut in half. Fees were imposed for water and misuse of that vital resource was fined. According to what may be one of the world’s earliest environmental protection laws, the fine for cutting down a living tree was a horse. After other recent researches, based on the studies of Taklamakan Desert in earth science and ecology, Zhang Qingsong, associate research fellow of the Institute of Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that the changes of climate and natural environment were the basic factors of the prosperity and decline of the ancient Kingdom of Kroraina. Finally, however, no political, military or economic wisdom could prevail against the forces of nature and the great Kroraina was buried in sand. In an ironic postscript to the history of Kroraina Kingdom, the Tarim River again changed course in 1921 and the Lake Lop Nor returned to its northern position. Sources: * Hulsewé, A. F. P. (1979). "China in Central Asia: The Early Stage 125 BC - AD 23 An annotated translation of chapters 61 and 96 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty", E. Brill, Leiden * Mallory, J. P. and Mair, Victor H. (2000). "The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West", Thames and Hudson, London * Ma Dazheng. 2003. The Tarim Basin, Ch. 7 in: History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Edited by Chahryar Adle and Irfan Habib, UNESCO Publications * Victor H. Mair. Sino-Platonic Papers, Number 228. The "Silk Roads" in Time and Space: Migrations, Motifs and Materials. July, 2012. Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia * Yuan Guoying, Zhao Ziyun. "Relationship between the rise and decline of ancient Loulan town and environmental changes". Chinese Geographical Science, 1999, Vol.9, Number 1, pag.78-82